welcome to the lone a show of the real headlines with none of the mercy for him alive at a washington d.c. now tonight we're going to talk about steve jobs as an innovator a businessman somebody who went with his gut and never used a single focus group and we're going to ask if other c.e.o.'s in today's business environment take a few notes from the now former apple c.e.o. then mother jones has done an in-depth investigation and the f.b.i. has use of fifteen thousand informants to spy on americans and set up sting operations but are they following terrorist plots or they just creating more of them and a number of activists have been arrested in washington d.c. this week for protesting against the keystone pipeline calling it's game over for

the planet if ghana is tar sands are exploited but is there any way to actually stop this deal from going through or to speak to jane hamsher we're going to have all of that for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so hurricane irene is about to unleash on the east coast in a few days and everybody is preparing for the harsh weather there are areas where tourists and residents are being told to evacuate their safety precautions to be taken there are the weather reporters doing live shots in the caribbean right now where the weather is getting pretty gnarly and then there are moments like this. i'm standing right here at the water's edge because this water is. more than eighty degrees and this is the fuel for the hurricane so you can see that there's a few people still here at the beach of occasion but it's very different it was yesterday and the occasional cold cave's gave us these today to get us through the

day because we had nothing else he was a little symbols on and. and a little hurricane flags on there so. where do i even begin here now like i said there are safety concerns people need to be alerted a third going to be an area that's going to get hit hard and if they should leave and you know find out where the shelters are but then in that case show us a goddamn show me a shelter shows about how to properly bored out their windows don't waste time walking on a beach showing us cupcakes from an area that three days from now will be hits i mean you've got to be kidding right you have to waste air time by showing us the exact sand but in two days will be touched by water let me walk on the sand a few more times let me dip my foot into the ocean until you get the point anything save that stuff for the local news there are some other stories believe it or not the fact is on a national scale and it could be squeezed into your newscast if you would only squeeze the fact i would pick up kate's out case in point today the department of

defense unveiled its annual assessment of china's military capabilities and development it was more than one hundred seventy days late but today congress finally got to take a look and make a few public statements now the gist of this report basically says that china is obviously driving hard towards achieving a set of economic and military benchmarks and they're becoming increasingly confident of their position on the world stage and they're continuing the trend of increasing their military spending this time in two thousand and ten by twelve point seven percent how they also concluded they concluded that beijing's ultimate goal is to become a world class economic and military power by twenty fifty really deep conclusion there how long did it take you to figure that out anyway the point i'm trying to get out. that is a yes china is trying to build up its military capabilities this is something of which are all well aware it's something which the u.s. should consider when it plans for the future and that doesn't mean we need to panic and especially does it mean that we need to not cut military spending as is the plan agreed upon in the debt deal let's not forget the countless stories that we've

done right here on this program detailing the wasteful defense projects that are costing billions if not trillions and without which let's face it we would be just as safe it's the waging war all over the world and i'm particularly concerned about what it comes to the putting us in danger department but let's move on of course with the release of this report the media and congressional war hawks are jumping on the opportunity to talk about how scary this is how much we cannot cut defense spending because apparently china is building up its military and that's a surprise to us representative buck mckeon chairman of the house armed services committee use the unveiling of the report today to make the following statement he said china clearly believes that it can capitalize on the global financial crisis using the united states economic uncertainty as a window of opportunity to strengthen china's economic diplomatic and security interests security the pacific could be further jeopardized if our regional allies also come to believe that the united states will sacrifice the presence and

capability of the us military and attempt to control its spending this is an unacceptable outcome in such a vital region of the globe. you know it's unacceptable to me that people make these sensationalized statements they continue to make them i don't know anybody calling them out i have to give props to think progress today for pointing out some very important facts that everybody else should also take into account yes china is building up its military capabilities but guess what else is a report shows us that we still spend six times more on our military than china does six times that means that we really don't have anything to panic about and we should still cut defense spending it's obvious it's the smart thing to do it's just not what lawmakers who have their pockets lined by defense contractors want you to know but instead of calling them out for those sensationalized the mainstream media now they're happy to miss.

how yesterday we found out that steve jobs would be stepping down as c.e.o. of apple and a letter to the apple community jobs wrote i have always said if there ever change a day i could no longer meet my duties and expectations is out will c.e.o. i would be the first to let you know unfortunately. as bad with pancreatic cancer as well as other health problems along the public although with this no every no specific details get it now immediately we saw apple shares tumble immediately we've seen questions arise this what the future of apple will be how much does a c.e.o. really matter will the company be able to hold onto that second most valuable spot in the world and let's take a moment to reflect on what it is that made jobs and sell stand out what made some call him the edison of our time is it a rare stroke of genius that can't be repeated or is there something that today's business culture could really learn from drives to help america innovate and create more jobs or discuss this with me as derek thompson senior editor at the atlantic

carrick thanks so much for joining us. steve jobs let's talk about what it is that made him who he is now do you think that this man really is some kind of a genius or is it that he also just went with his gut. he was not afraid to make mistakes that if he had no idea he went through it didn't worry about focus groups and kept pushing i think here it is pretty clear he is the greatest most important c.e.o. of our generation and that sounds like a huge leap in statement but it's actually it might be understating the case he might be the greatest c.e.o. of the twentieth and early twenty first centuries we're talking about a guy who came into his company after a quarter where it lost money it is now the largest company in the world by market share. on par with exxon and then once we heard the news that he was resigning it last about ten to seventeen billion dollars equal to the g.d.p. of some small countries this is this is the greatest c.e.o. of our time and i think what made him that it will be debated and we you know history will be its own judge i think what it is is it's his austere sense of

simplicity if you look at these these products the i pod the i pod the i pad and they are incredibly simple and this simplicity extends not just to the products but also through the showroom like retail centers where you buy these products and through the advertisers were any. brand and she would say we're never going to write this piece today calling the edison of our time and people said oh but edison invented things and steve jobs just took ideas and isn't took ideas too he didn't invent the light bulb he didn't a lot of a lot of the ideas that that we consider him being the first to come up with steve jobs was similarly a genius in taking ideas that existed and perspective and marketing them for a mass audience you just did it better you think he did he just did it better but i mean so is that why you think i mean why are people willing to pay so much money to buy an apple product when you can get the exact same thing for cheaper it just might be p.c. or might be a different laptop there might be dell or something why are people willing to pay so much more just because it looks cool. looking good is an important thing and

part of this might be sort of conspicuous branding for yourself you want people to see you with an i phone when people see you with an i pad but beyond that i think this doesn't sound terribly intellectual but. it just the just work better i phones just work better than a lot of juries and the i pad works better than the playbook from blackberry this is something that their critics say again and again the products just work better and they work better because they have a vision of simplicity and is it easy to use its associated with everything from the i pod to the i phones do they also work better because steve jobs is willing to take certain risks right a number of people say were decided that hey why don't we focus on some of steve jobs failures rather than his successes to find out what kind of man he really was and you could talk about that one that will to which there are only a couple hundred they really failed and you talk about the least and he had to go through a lot of ups and downs first and i'm just wondering you know do you think that in the business environment today people are more afraid to take those kinds of risks they're more afraid to fail or instill and i'm valley is that still very much the

norm in the congo you know there's a culture of failure it's the kind of place where if you fail starting your first company it's ok people actually want to hire you because they say now that you've learned what it means to fail we think you'll be more successful i will say this about steve jobs he's been on a run in the last ten years that is just unprecedented we're talking about a guy ten years ago invents the i pod it's sold three hundred fourteen million three hundred fourteen million devices and i phone itself is only four years old if a child was born in the day the i phone came out that child wouldn't be in kindergarten and yet there's an entire economy that revolves around creating apps and devices that basically make the i phone one of the most important devices of our generation it's not even five years old he's on an unbelievable run and it's hard to measure it and think about the fact that it's not going to like you going to ever but so the mechanism is there anybody else out there that you think could take steve jobs place or that has similar tactics that he does that just goes against the grain you know like i mentioned before right he never did focus groups

i feel like these days if you go to business school probably the first thing you've got to learn when it comes to marketing when it comes to branding is that you do focus groups and find out what people want first rather than having an idea write having some kind of spine. go off and just charging full speed ahead on the one hand i think it's fair to say that steve jobs is sort of one of a kind on the other hand without the use of prophecy i don't know who the next job is going to be but he's never going to stay here is going to look and we compare you know mark zuckerberg on facebook right these guys already a different beast i think the safest and smartest thing to say right now is that we don't know but there will be another great c.e.o. who's going to do unbelievable things that we don't know from now i mean think about it this company in one thousand nine hundred seven was in a ditch people thought that apple was done microsoft in the year two thousand was worth six hundred billion dollars it was a valuable company in the history of the world and it's had stagnating stock for the last ten years we can't predict the future but i think we do know that at the rate of techno the rate of technological change there's going to be another person who has as big an impact on our life as steve jobs maybe it's two or three people

from different companies it might not be one but it's going to happen and so in that case do you think that you know you mentioned of course obviously we saw shares plummet and when it came to our poll how big of a difference is it going to be without steve jobs around for apple i mean they probably already have a lot of great products in line for what next ten years or so i don't know what's coming next they're famously secretive company but also speaking of a mystery investors are famously melodramatic but you hear that steve jobs is leaving the company you mediately sell off apple for ten percent the fact is that apple's price to earnings ratio which is a good way to look at how healthy the stock is going forward it's actually lower average compared to the rest of the dow even though their quarterly revenue statements are just astronomical we're looking at a company that's still going to move into china and india as a rising middle class you know get makes money is that they can buy i pods and i pads and i phones i think the future this company's extremely bright but predictably i think another company is probably going to come along and conquer it and conquer google we just don't know what i guess we have we're just going to have to wait and see it's an exciting world that we live in but i think that we know one

of the questions that we also should ask is there are a number of other countries out there that are trying to replicate silicon valley how do we also replicate that across the rest of america how do you have this culture of failure rather than too big to fail banks too big to fail. i don't industry and get back to come into the best of our society so we can actually start innovating again right will it's tough you know that's actually asked a lot of people a lot of columnist for the atlantic have written about what's the secret of silicon valley and it's tough to put your finger on but i think one of the pieces is a culture of failure and a culture that says you know entrepreneurs are big big grow up the cash out they make their millions or billions and then they say you know what we want to do we want to reach back down into the next generation and help hold them up it's an incredible culture of collaboration that invites failure and says it's ok if this project doesn't work then most people are saying we're going to be investing five billion dollars somewhere else maybe now bank of america right now we're going to be going has a lot of money a lot of different thoughts are jack thank you so much for joining us and here. now

still to come we have the do not call list to block telemarketing calls kind of the do not track list on line really work find out just a moment and the f.b.i. has made counterterrorism one of their top priority since nine eleven but are they in trapping innocent people forever aronsen associate director at the center for investigative reporting i think diversity of california berkeley joins me in just a month. into it only when there were three mechanisms to do the work how to bring justice for accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i think taxes. but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. that you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else and here's some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't. charge welcomes a big. say. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right. i think the leader wanted well. we have the government says there are keep things safe get ready because you're going to your freedom.

well i it's no secret that the internet wants to know everything about you not only your sites figuring out what you like and what pages you visit they also want to know where you are at all times but in two thousand and eleven a bill was introduced by u.s. representative jackie speier to stop the behavior of bad trackers in their tracks. the do not track me online act of two thousand and eleven hopes to protect consumer privacy by providing an option that is said to be equivalent to the national do not

call registry off lie. however that bill is never actually made into a law so some web browsers take it upon themselves to give users an option firefox internet explorer and safari of all and active the do not track internet setting option on their browser course since google loves to cross that creepy line anyone who uses cro they're just going to forget about having that choice and we should know the do not track internet setting came from a regular guest on our show christopher so going from the idea was that the setting is like a user signing a petition sending a clear signed ad companies not want to be tracked and they're not trying to feature is very similar and they do not call list which ideally would be great for internet users settlers when the problem since this setting has no legal backing and advertisers think if they need it to keep tabs on how you surf the web they just ignore it it issue we've discussed on the show several times before and here's an interview from back in april there are concerns about liability with with firms obviously they're very concerned that if they are found to be in violation of

consumers privacy that this could be something that spirals you look at some of the social networks they have millions of users so if if a user agreement or for user information from be used incorrectly what exactly the scale of any awards judgment remains to be seen and. so needless to say many people have concerns including the government and in fact republican congressman thomas roche has called on the f.c.c. to require all advertising networks to disclose what they do and even brings up the possibility of requiring those companies to explain under oath their practices now i think is a step in the right direction but i have to say i do worry that until internet users fight back against the intrusion of their privacy in the same way that they fight against solicitor phone calls interrupting their dinner over to have to continue to see internet companies hoarding our personal data without any recourse . now think of a few of the foiled terrorist plots that we've spoken about before on the show the new birth for the poor and christmas tree bomber or the new york subway bombing

plot they all have lot of very big elements in common they were sting operations cases where f.b.i. informants worked with the convicted or accused cases the f.b.i. labeled as a success which others might call entrapment and it makes you wonder if since nine eleven when the bureau changed its focus so heavily to counterterrorism if the f.b.i. is really stopping terrorists or creating and egging on more since nine eleven counterterrorism now makes up a three point three billion dollars of the f.b.i.'s budget and that's the lion's share and not a jones as an in-depth investigation and that the massive network of informants unveiling of the bureau currently maintains a roster of over fifteen thousand spies most of them tasked with infiltrating muslim communities and for every informative bush they listed in the bureau's records there as many as three unofficial ones from other joes examined prosecutions of five hundred eight defendants in terrorism related cases and found that nearly half involve the use of informants saying operations resulted in

prosecutions against one hundred fifty eight defendants and of that total forty nine defendants participated in plots led by agent provocateur who were an f.b.i. operative instigated terrorist action and that all but three of the high profile domestic terrorist plots that we've seen over the last decade those were f.b.i. stings so let's find out more about how this network of spies works and whether or not we can come to a conclusion about busting terrorists leading them joining me to discuss this is trevor aaronson associate director of the center for investigative reporting at the university of california berkeley are trevor i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and obviously in every sting operation you need an informant and so we found out here from this investigation is that the f.b.i. actually has fifteen thousand of them do we know if all fifteen thousand of those are used for counterterrorism or are there other operations going on as well. right there are fifteen thousand total informants within the f.b.i.

not all of them are necessarily working counterterrorism but i think it's important to understand the historical context of informants within the f.b.i. right after cointelpro in the seventy's the f.b.i. had fifteen hundred. fifteen thousand which is a ten fold increase a lot of that increase has to do with the two thousand and four presidential directive or george w. bush assigned the f.b.i. or task the f.b.i. with increasing what they term as confidential human sources for informants and the main reason for that was the f.b.i.'s increasing push into counterterrorism so we can see for sure how many of the fifteen thousand i work in counterterrorism and many of these informants are in fact doing that work in counterterrorism investigations ok so when we say increasing push to get more informants how exactly they had so many people to sign on and want to help the government i mean is it always just hey would you like to help lend us a hand or sometimes is there more dirty practices involved maybe some blackmail involved. sure there are some informants who will volunteer to work for the f.b.i.

but they are by far a minority the the way that you're able to get informants is using criminal prosecution against them if they find someone who you know was committing some kind of crime they can use that against him and say if you work with us we can make this crime go away but you for the most part of the muslim community united states are affluent law abiding communities so it's very hard to get a substantial amount of people on the phone from malaysians so what you're going to turn to is a partnership that has with. immigration customs enforcement or ice where they're able to use immigration violations against people to get them to use the leverage to get them to cooperate with federal authorities now you also wrote about here that the f.b.i. now has realized that perhaps they don't have to be so worried about another massive attack the scope of nine eleven happening that they need to focus on lone wolf terrorist so when they actually start looking for just a lone wolf or a random person is that always legal or do you think there are also areas where the line gets a little blurred where perhaps innocent people are spied on and thrown in under

this umbrella. that's certainly one of the concerns for the most part the f.b.i. is concerned with someone who will go on an online message board and become inspired to commit some kind of act of terror and finding that person is incredibly difficult so what they do is they use this network of informants to inform on whether someone is saying inflammatory things are saying they want to commit some kind of violent action and if they do find someone like that they will usually find another informant a kind of operator who will go and offer them a plot so for example if someone says they want to go bomb a shopping mall go up and provide the means for them to do you know one of the constitutional concerns is whether in doing this the f.b.i. is essentially spying on people but has no reason to believe any kind of criminal activity ok so now of course the biggest concern here is people have to wonder whether this is somebody that would have been pushed over that edge on their own whether they would have gone forward on their own or whether they were just exiled

once the f.b.i. comes over and somebody whispers a plot i hear and hear somebody says i'm going to offer you all the weapons all the money that you need in order to help that and you think of some examples you know where you felt like somebody really may have been entrapped. sure you know that that is significant you know whether these people really had the capacity to commit these crimes were it not for the f.b.i. an example of a minute illinois didn't care sharif was broke he was working at a video game store he can have a place to live as this car was broken down on an informant came to him offered him a place to live off the use of his car and over the course of weeks the informant and garrett talked about a plot to attack a shopping mall in illinois and of course eric didn't have the means to do that and so an informant introduced eric to an undercover f.b.i. agent who was posing not as an arms dealer the arms dealer offered to provide money but derek didn't have any money to buy the grid so instead he read the character traits stereo speakers for that they would then use to attack shopping malls and

that transaction was enough to prove a terrorism conspiracy against their tree and he's serving thirty five years in prison for that i think questions that certainly raise nutcases whether there could have you know gone forward with any plot given that he didn't have a place to live have a car and he certainly didn't have any money ok so after spending so much time investigating a looking through many of these cases did you come to a conclusion because you asked the same question right at the very beginning of your pieces is the f.b.i. actually filing terrorist plots here or are they just helping create more of them where that threat may have never existed what's your take. vast majority of the cases we looked at five hundred pieces in a particular sting operation but we look at most of these men did not have any capacity to commit the crime and where they where this gets into question is when you mention entrapment it's going to end of the legal definition of entrapment is often different from what you and i would think of as entrapment so when we read these cases an average person might say yes this person was entrapped but in united

states the legal definition or meeting the legal definition of attraction in court is incredibly difficult if not impossible for the best defense attorneys so well in some of these cases to get out of person look at them and say this is an entrapment case so far the courts have not found these cases have proceeded toward convictions ok because now to get some of this information of course you interviewed a lot of. holes or perhaps that are in officials in the f.b.i. and you some of these people they are also feel like what they're doing is wrong like perhaps they're trapping people into these scenarios that maybe they're crossing the line when it comes to civil liberties and surveillance. i times of obviously the f.b.i. has to walk a very thin line between in place of crossing civil liberties that i was in he don't want to do that but what they're what they're trying to do is prevent the next attack they believe their single purpose and their greatest priority right now is to prevent that attack so when i asked f.b.i. agents that specific question a lot of common answer is well what would you have us do you know this person says

he wants to attack the united states if he got access to weapons he certainly seems capable of doing that so that the f.b.i. is policy then is to intercede to prevent them and use the only method it has to take these people on the street which is criminal prosecution and so in the f.b.i. from the f.b.i. perspective do you believe they are preventing terrorist from staying on the street who would commit acts of terror were they given the opportunity by actual terrorists by someone who would provide them with a bomb or the munitions that in f.b.i. agent or. is actually. now do you think the majority of americans actually feel the same way right because that's one of the decisions you have to make is what's worth it and i think that's something that we've seen happen throughout this country over the last ten years since nine eleven very slowly but surely they've been encroaching on many of our civil liberties taking away many of our rights we have an increasing surveillance state and a lot of people think that if that's what keeps me say that will find that lone wolf and maybe a few innocent people get caught up in the meantime that it's worth it what are the

responses they have been getting. i think that's a very interesting discussion for the country to have is whether you know in order to keep us safe we're treading on civil liberties i think there's also a discussion out about whether we're willing to live with a certain amount of risk i mean going to a shopping mall anywhere in the united states you run the risk of someone walking in with a gun and shooting people no matter what you do in public life there's always going to be a certain amount of risk in federal law enforcement agencies don't think of it illegitimate it so much and so i think we need to determine as a nation how much how this surveillance is keeping us safe and how much we we need it in place in order to keep us safe or are we willing to live with a certain amount of risk that someone holed up somewhere is willing to do violence and isn't telling anyone and he's asked to be able to do that at any time but that could happen no matter how much surveillance the person place why i think that what we need in order to have a conversation are more pieces like this right more information for people to actually be able to see the proof in their own hands more investigative work

watching. thank you so much for joining us tonight. higher thursday edition a show and tell is just ahead and there's been an ongoing protest an arrest over a planned pipeline from campus in the us into that topic with jane hamsher founder of firedoglake. there's nothing here that we can afford. i think. the one. we have to go on the says they're going to say get ready.